Let's chat about attracting new users

Well, last week's brainstorm was more like a sprinkle, so I think I'll go back to the usual format where I set a date/time and facilitate a discussion. Let's get together on Tuesday, September 4th at from 4-5pm EST in the Library Marketing Exchange. In October, I'll be presenting to the Wisconsin Public Library Association on the topic of reaching out to new users, so this topic is a timely one for me anyway. I'd love to hear what's worked and what hasn't in terms of gaining new patrons and what questions you have about reaching out to new user groups. If that sounds like a fun talk to you, you know where to go!

Also, the topic of the last brainstorm was innovation. In the chat room, I pointed out some helpful links I'd like to share with you:

• Designing Better Libraries has a great post called Feed Your Hunger for Innovation Inspiration. The post contains bookmark-worthy links on getting your creative juices flowing.
• I found some free mind mapping software that may come in handy when plotting out all of your good ideas. You can learn more about mind mapping here.
• I'm a huge fan of the pen-and-paper approach to creative thinking. This post from DIY Planner discusses the Advantages of Keeping an Analog Work Journal. Awesome!

Have a great week, everyone! Please don't hesitate to send me your ideas for discussion topics.

The big brainstorm begins tomorrow

I hope you'll get a chance to spend a minute or two in the Library Marketing Exchange tomorrow (Thursday) to talk creativity. I chose the topic of creativity not only because it's an ongoing interest of mine, but also because the ability devise original solutions to marketing problems is a must-have skill for librarians. I asked 2 questions that I invite everyone to answer:

1. How can librarians improve their ability to innovate?
2. How can libraries support their patrons' own creative pursuits?

More details on how to participate are here, but it's pretty simple. Just show up anytime and share your thoughts. I'll be in and out of the room as I can tomorrow. After the brainstorming session, I'll summarize the themes that crop up on the blog. Sound good? See you there! :-)

An internal marketing recap and the next chat!

Before I continue my posts on the values of gaming in libraries, I want to relate the feedback I received on our last chat about internal marketing. As you may remember, I asked internal marketing expert Sybil Stershic to review our chat and comment on the issues that sprouted up. She generously did so and now I'd like to share her insights with you.

One participant mentioned that her library is working on a logo redesign, and she was concerned that there was little staff buy-in since the process did not involve their input. My inclination is to encourage staff involvement in the planning stages, but I acknowledge that doing so may put too many cooks in the kitchen and stall projects. In her e-mail to me, Sybil noted that staff input does not necessarily mean getting full staff consensus. Rather, at minimum, staff should be told of the process and rationale for the design. They should also be the first to see it. As Sybil summed up,

Bottom line: employees should be considered an organization’s "first audience."

I thought this was a great tip and one that is simple to implement.

Another concern raised was that there exists an aversion to risk, or "culture of fear" as I put it, that precludes good ideas from being implemented and devalues experimentation as a part of the daily routine. We discussed that some staff feel like it's a waste of time to try out new technologies that don't seem immediately beneficial, for example. Sybil brought up a number of ideas that apply to this problem. First, she noted that internal marketing involves aspects of "attitude management" and "communications management." Attitude management means getting staff to buy into the organization's mission and goals, while communications management means giving staff the information and tools to do their jobs. Sybil pointed out that management needs to address each of these areas and be attentive to staff perceptions and concerns about technologies and other aspects of service. She mentioned a report from the Marketing Science Institute called, "Paradoxes of Technology: Consumer Cognizance, Emotions, and Coping Strategies." The study sounds like a good primer for managers about how technology can be a source of excitement as well as anxiety for their staff. It's easy to overlook the fact that staff perceptions count as much as patrons' perceptions. If they perceive a technology as irrelevant even if it isn't, they won't be inclined to investigate it further, which could ultimately hurt library services. Sybil also suggested that better communication is needed to clarify policies so staff feel comfortable taking some risks.

Finally, Sybil recommended treating staff like any other target market by doing some market research to identify how to best engage them. She states,

As for what helps motivate staff or what's holding them back from learning or moving forward, just ask them. I'm a big believer in internal surveys (whether formal or informal)...ask your staff: What barriers are in the way to [fill-in-the blank here]? And what suggestions do you have to get around these roadblocks? (Of course, the quality of answers will depend on the organization's culture, particularly in how open communications are, how well management listens and responds, etc.)

What a terrific point! Sometimes we forget that the simplest way to solve a problem is to first have a clear understanding of what it is.

My hearty thanks to Sybil for taking the time to share her years of experience in this area!

I'd like to build on some of the topics that came up in the last chat and develop them further in our next one. To that end, let's chat about transforming cultures of fear into cultures of creativity. How can libraries improve their ability to innovate and how can they also support their patrons' own creative pursuits? I'm to conduct the next chat a little bit differently. Instead of having a set time for the chat, I'm going to leave the chat open for an entire day. Just stop by the chat room, leave your comments and suggestions, and the next person can build on your ideas or just leave their own. I envision it as a sort of day-long brainstorming session. (You can also feel free to chat with anyone who happens to be in the room). By the end of the day, I hope to have a monster list of ideas. I'll review them and pull out the themes and most intriguing ideas, which I'll share in a blog post. Sound good? If you're game, here's how it'll work:

• Go to the Library Marketing Exchange on Thursday, August 16th (anytime).


• Introduce yourself and where you work (optional).
  
• Leave your answer to the question, How can libraries improve their ability to innovate and how can they also support their patrons' own creative pursuits? I'm interested in your creativity tips and how you can inspire a creative culture in libraries.
  
• Build on previous responses or leave ideas that are entirely your own. Chat with anyone who may be in the room.


• That's it! I'll summarize the responses in a LM blog post.

I'm hoping this approach will allow more people to participate and be involved in the conversation. I'll be poking in throughout to day to deposit my 2 cents. Hope to find you there!

[By the way, please feel free to suggest a theme for an upcoming chat! I'd love to get your ideas.]

Thanks for the chat! Here's the summary...

Thanks to everyone who turned out for the chat last Tuesday. I thought there was some good discussion and some promising ideas came out of the talk. However, I do understand that the chat room format can get a little unwieldy, and we lost a person or two I really wanted to follow-up with ("Kate:" If you're out there, feel free to get in touch with me to follow-up on the question you had!). I want to summarize what we talked about and point out the major issues we identified when marketing to internal staff.

A major point of discussion was the observation that many staff are reluctant to try new technologies because doing so is seen as waste of time, a source of stress, and a distraction from serving patrons. Participants offered up a number of ideas to get staff into a "play" mode where they can experiment and make some discoveries that may ultimately help patrons. Some of the librarians in the chat room mentioned that they have no funds to pay for incentives, so our ideas focused on other means of motivation. Here are some of the highlights:

• Have a bragging wall
• Sponsor competitions with other libraries
• Get people together to talk about what they learn
• Put people in teams
• Let managers and staff know what the ROI is (Return On Investment) for their time (it's not a waste of time to try new things!)
• Partner with patrons who are familiar with social technologies so that they can teach staff (someone suggested that this could count as volunteer hours)
• Have an "open mic night" where patrons can share their tech knowledge with staff
• Integrate "play" into daily routines

"Kate" and I were the only two academic librarians in the bunch (I think), and she brought up a really good point but left the room before we could get into it more (darn!). She said that in her library, time and the learning curve do hinder experimentation with social technologies, but more of an impediment is the desire to move slowly because no one is sure how to proceed with these trials. There is no policy in place and people are a bit nervous to enter uncharted waters. Kate's observation stands out to me because in the past couple of weeks I've been hearing similar comments in a number of different contexts, which makes me think we have a pervasive problem on our hands when it comes to marketing: a culture of fear. I want to think on this some more and get Sybil's take on this before I write more (I'm being cautious - ha!), but essentially I hear from librarians that they are afraid to move ahead with ideas because they stop themselves by thinking of all the ways things won't work instead of considering their potential and reserving judgment. In part, I think the lack of clear policies or at least parameters can increase uncertainty and therefore fear. This problem is definitely not unique to libraries, but that doesn't make it any less problematic. For internal marketing to work, people need to feel free to fulfill their brand promises and confident that they'll be backed up by higher-ups.

Finally, our conversation didn't stop at tech talk. Some participants talked about branding projects their libraries are working on. The general consensus was that it's important to involve staff during the planning process, and that it could be more difficult to rally staff support when they are simply offered a finished logo they had no say in. One person mentioned that in a former position, the library redesigned its Web page, involving staff in the prototype stages. To top it off, staff were given nifty t-shirts with the Web address, which they donned enthusiastically. I know that having too many cooks in the kitchen has the potential to stall projects, but involvement could be structured so that it's productive. Today, I was just thinking that even something as simple as letting staff vote on one of a few prototype logo designs could give them an investment in the project that would pay off during implementation.

Feel free to read the full transcript of the talk and contact me with questions or other ideas. Also, I'm going to contact my internal marketing guru, Sybil, to get her take on our exchange.

Thanks again for showing up! I'll post a new chat time and topic soon.

Let's chat

How does today 7-8pm EST sound?

Tonight's Library Marketing Exchange chat is all about internal marketing, or, marketing to your most important audience (staff). For some background, see my previous post.

As a special added bonus, Sybil Stershic, THE expert in internal marketing as far as I'm concerned, has graciously offered to respond to any issues and/or questions that come up as a result of the chat, which I'll communicate with her and share her answers in a special post.

Hope you'll be there! (It would just be sad if I were talking to myself...).

Chat room date changed due to reality check

After digging out from two big projects that were due today, I poked my head out and checked in with reality. What did I discover? I realized that I scheduled our LM Exchange chat for tomorrow at 7pm. While this may work for some of you die-hards in the crowd, I figure most of you will be getting ready to enjoy the July 4th holiday. So, I'm moving the chat to next Tuesday 7/10, 7-8pm EST.

The topic this time is going to be internal marketing. Many people forget that getting your marketing plan down on paper is only half the battle. The other half is getting buy-in from the people who matter most: your staff. Doing so is not always an easy feat, to say the least. While the value of library marketing may be self-evident to us, it can be viewed by others as a (gasp!) waste of time. I'd like to discuss ways in which we can do better at making marketing a total organization effort. Here are some ideas I have about possible talking points (please do bring your own):

• Staff recognition programs and other incentives.
• Creating an open, collaborative marketing planning process.
• Innovative approaches to staff training (Sybil Stershic had a terrific post on this topic recently).
  
• Improving communications and information sharing
• Writing internal marketing plans

To get you thinking, take a look at these two short pieces and just imagine different wordings and examples to fit the library environment: The Power of Internal Marketing and Making Internal Marketing Work.

Hope to "see" you next Tuesday in the chat room!

More on Meebo chat

As a newbie to Meebo, I didn't realize that chats are saved in handy logs. This is a great (new?) feature, and one worth knowing about if you plan on using it for your own library marketing purposes. This also means that I didn't have to copy/paste/e-mail the (incomplete) transcript for those of you who participated in the Library Marketing Exchange branding chat (sorry!). Here's a complete and much more attractive transcript of the branding chat that took place on June 14th: http://chatlogs.meebo.com/room/librarymarketingexchange/logs/2007/06/14/

See you in the next chat!

Thanks for the talk! Mark your calendars

Thanks to all of you who showed up for yesterday's Branding 101 chat! I had a great time getting to know those of you who stopped by! As an experiment, I thought it went fairly well. A number of participants are working on branding projects, so we had a good deal to talk about. Much of the transcript is still available in the Library Marketing Exchange chat room, so feel free to peruse.

Based on yesterday's talk, I've decided to keep doing thematic chats once or twice a month, while dropping by and posting questions, comments, ideas, neat examples, etc. whenever I have a chance. I'm usually logged into Meebo, so odds are you can usually catch me hanging out there. (My Meebo ID is jsstover, so you can tell if I'm logged in and in the room). I'll also try chats at different times of the day so those of you in time zones other than EST aren't left out.

One participant remarked that the chat room is a little clunky for in-depth discussions, but great for community-building, and I agree! So expect to see a pretty casual exchange of ideas, chitchat, and some meeting-and-greeting going on. Here's the scoop for the next chat:

You're invited to talk library marketing!

What: The theme will be internal marketing (a.k.a. getting staff buy-in). Plus, anything else you'd like to discuss.
Where: The Library Marketing Exchange
When: Tuesday, July 3rd, 7pm-8pm EST
Who: Me, you, other library-marketing enthusiasts!
Why: To share ideas and get to know colleagues
Directions: Click on this link and type. You can also access the chat room directly from LM.

Hope to see you there!

Chat prep: Branding 101

Tomorrow (Thursday, June 14th), I'll be hanging out in the Library Marketing Exchange chat room from 12-1pm EST to say hello, talk library marketing, and get to know what you're up to. To get the ball rolling, I'm making the theme of the chat Branding 101. If you have a different topic in mind (or no topic) that's fine, but I figured having a theme would help get the conversation moving.

In my recent branding talk, I distilled some of the lessons I'm learning into a few Branding 101 points, which are:

1. Know your customers: Understand what makes your customers tick by finding out what's important to them and what they hope to achieve.
2. Know yourself: Come to grips with who you are as an organization and who you aren't. By doing so, you'll see where you and your patrons meet, and where you may need to make some changes to better accommodate their needs. Remember, you can't be all things to all people, but you can do a better job of being yourself
3. Find your inspiration: Great brands stand for something big. What gets you up in the morning? How can you get patrons excited too? If you don't care about something, you have nothing to build your brand on.
4. Find your aspiration: What, ultimately, do you hope to become? Great brands connect their aspirations with those of their patrons. Think beyond today to the possibilities of tomorrow. Develop your vision with patrons and involve them in getting there.
5. Write it down: Everyone inside and outside of your library should know what you stand for. Communicate it every chance you get.
6. Live it: Here's where brand-building happens. Some ways you can live your brand include maximizing every point of contact you have with patrons and becoming their advocate in everything you do. Let's talk more tomorrow about how we can practice what we preach!

How can you participate in tomorrow's chat? Very easily! Just go to this address: http://www.meebo.com/room/librarymarketingexchange/ or the Library Marketing - Thinking Outside the Book homepage (you'll see the chat box in the sidebar) and type away! If you can't make it this time around, leave a message anytime about questions or comments you have, projects you'd like to get feedback on, or other topics you'd like to see addressed in future chats. Your message will be available in the chat room for a while, so don't hesitate to leave a note!

P.S. You don't have to stay in the chat room for the entire hour, of course. Drop in, drop out, stop by in the middle, it's all good! :-D

Library Marketing has a chat room!

After seeing mentions of the new Meebo chat rooms on Walking Paper and BWL I just had to give them a try. So, I bring you the Library Marketing Exchange. It's also embedded in my blog, so you can chat with me and/or amongst yourselves directly from LM.

It's a highly experimental feature right now. My intent is for the Library Marketing Exchange to be a mechanism for librarians and marketers to get together and generate marketing ideas. Also, you can always use it to get in touch with me, though I doubt that's the biggest appeal! If it seems to be working well for fostering ideas, I'll keep it around.

To kick off the new room, I'll be donating my lunch hour this Thursday, June 14th at 12pm EST to get a conversation going. The topic du jour will be branding. This week, I plan to expand on the ideas from my recent branding presentation through a series of posts, and so I think we'll have some good food for thought prior to the chat on Thurs. (and if not, we'll just make something up!).

Hope to "see" you there!

Update: Please let me know if you have ideas for chat topics you'd like to participate in. I'll see about hosting some additional thematic chats if there's enough interest. You can leave your ideas in a comment or via the chat room.